


Taking Leave

by quandong_crumble



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Friendship, Multi, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Wanda Maximoff/Vision, Team Dynamics, background Rhodey/Tony, implied Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson - Freeform, learning to be a team, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4366826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quandong_crumble/pseuds/quandong_crumble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After they've been granted a few days leave, Rhodey spends some time with his new teammates to see what they have planned for the break, before heading to New York to visit Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unadulterated](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unadulterated/gifts).



The first month or so feels weird. Jim’s acutely aware that he’s the oldest in the group, if you don’t count Steve’s decades in deep freeze. Hell, Wanda doesn’t even look old enough to drink, and Vision’s either months old or eleven, depending on whether you count JARVIS’ lifespan in there too. Compared to them, Jim feels like an old man, at least when he’s not in the suit. It makes it hard, at first, to really connect with anyone.

Jim’s pretty sure he spends the first two weeks trying not to step on either Steve or Natasha’s toes. He’s spent too long either working solo or in charge of his team to slip comfortably back into taking orders in the field. Not that Captain America is a bad field commander. Quite the opposite. But it takes time to get back into the swing of it. And together, Steve and Natasha are excellent co-chairpersons of the team.

Sam helps. And Natasha. They both make more effort than Jim expected them to. Sam meets him every morning for a run and a chat, and somehow manages to make it look like he’s not slowing down to keep pace with Jim’s slightly shorter legs. Natasha, surprisingly, became his late night confidante, sharing a pot of tea when neither of them can sleep. She has a surprisingly wicked sense of humour that Jim had never seen before, and beyond that, she’s simply easy to talk to. Fun, engaging, and she gets all of his dorky classic sci-fi references better than anyone else on the team does.

Their first battle is a shit storm. They’re too fresh and new, only two training sessions under their belts when Maria brings them news of what she calls a “Neo-Hydra” cell in Tennessee. They go in underprepared and with bad intel and spend half the fight being in the wrong place or getting in each other’s way. They win, but it’s messy.

After, Steve calls a meeting with all of them and makes them hash out exactly what they each felt went wrong. They’re tired and sore in more cases than not, and there’s a lot of finger pointing and calling out to start with, but they manage to come up with some decent suggestions in the end. Two days later, after everyone’s cooled off and had a chance to recuperate, Steve pulls him aside and Jim finds himself giving combat strategy and training advice to _Captain America_. That’s something he never thought he’d do.

After that, things start to come together better. They train. They fight. They get a routine. Wanda comes out of her shell a bit more—she’s a sweet kid, though a bit sad and distant—and Jim starts to think _Vision_  instead of _JARVIS_ every time he hears that particular voice. After a few months, the Avengers facility starts to feel like home as much as any of the bases ever did.

\---

“Struggling to keep up today, old man?”

Sam’s towel hits Jim in the chest. He catches it and throws it back, making a face at the smell. 

“Not on your life, featherbrain.”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “You were pretty slow on that last turn there.”

“Just didn’t want to mess up your pretty wings,” Jim teases him.

“Yeah, right, you’re taking it very easy on the tight lefts since Florida.” Sam sobers. “What’s up with that?”

Jim shrugs. “The suit’s shuddering through the left turns. I thought I had it squared away but there must be more damage that I can’t see.”

Steve comes through the door in time to hear the last bit. He raises his eyebrows. “And here I thought you were every bit the mechanic our Mister Stark is?”

Jim scoffs. “Engineer, Rogers. Anyway, helicopters are one thing. The War Machine, well, she’s something else entirely.” _Something without standard parts or a repair manual,_  he doesn’t add.

“I think we’re all due a few days leave after what went down last month,” Steve adds. “You know, if you need time off to go and get repairs done, you can take it.”

Jim nods. It might be a good idea. He can get the repairs done on War Machine and get some downtime at the same time. It would be good to spend some time with Tony. They’ve barely seen each other for more than a few hours at a time since Tony effectively retired and Jim joined the Avengers. 

“Just be back by the Fourth,” Steve says. He looks shifty, Jim thinks, until he realises that this is Steve looking bashful. “I thought we could do something together. As a team. If no one had plans?”

Jim thinks for a moment of barbecue in his moms’ backyard and the constant anxiety, reminding himself that they’re just fireworks every five minutes. He leaves Independence Day to the rest of the family, even though fireworks just make him flinch now, not duck for cover. It’s always been easier to hole up somewhere quiet or stay on base rather than deal with his moms’ quiet concern. “Yeah, I can handle that.”

\---

Jim calls Tony that night and makes plans to join him at the Tower on Tuesday. Tony sounds happy with the idea, and they make all the usual plans for catching up with New York based friends and for more… _private_  activities. Jim hangs up the phone with a silly grin on his face and wanders out to the compound’s massive kitchen in search of a late night snack.

The kitchen’s hardly empty, even this late. There’s a group of SHIELD agents hanging around the stove while one heats a large pot of what smells like beer and beef stew. Jim can see Vision’s bright cape draped over the back of a chair in the far corner—the android looks like he’s deep in quiet conversation with Wanda, who has her head down and her hair forward over her face. Jim gives them an awkward wave, but doesn’t want to head over and intrude on their conversation.

Instead he heads for the large urn on the breakfast bar and taps it with the back of his hand to make sure it’s hot. His teapot is where he left it last night, tucked behind the array of blank white coffee mugs that almost no one uses, and he scoops loose leaf tea from the canister labelled “Black Widow’s—DO NOT TOUCH” into it. 

“Better make enough for two,” Natasha says almost directly into his ear.

Jim doesn’t jump—he’s gotten used to Natasha’s preference for sneaking up on people to give her the satisfaction—but his hand does jerk enough to spill tea leaves on the countertop. “Always do.”

The smallest rec room is empty at this time of night, so they set up in there with their tea and some chocolate cake Natasha found unlabelled in the cupboard.

“Did Steve tell you that we’re getting leave?” Jim asks.

“Leave?” Nat raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re still so _military_.”

Jim laughs. “Twenty-something years of military service will do that to a man. Anyway, Madame Co-Chairperson, did Steve mention to you that he’s giving us some time off?”

“We discussed it.” Natasha takes a sip of her tea and makes a blissful face. “I take it you’re going home to the little wife?”

“Don’t let Tony hear you call him that.” Jim laughs. “But yes, I’m going to see him.”

“Oh please, Iike he’d do anything about it if he heard. Say hello to him for me. And to Pepper, if you see her.” Natasha’s smile is playful.

“Are you going to take some time?”

She nods. “I’ll visit the Bartons. Clint decided he couldn’t wait until little Nate was older to start renovating the dining room, and Laura’s slowly going mad. Power tools all day and crying all night. I thought I’d offer her some moral support and see my godson at the same time.”

Jim grimaces. “Poor woman. Say hello to Clint and the family for me, though.”

“I will.”

Noise from the kitchen drifts in, filling their companionable silence with the murmur of indistinguishable words and the general hubbub of cooking and eating noise. Jim picks at the stolen chocolate cake—it kind of tastes stale, but it’s edible—and sips his tea.

\---

Tuesday starts like any other. Jim has a pre-workout snack in his little kitchenette and then joins Sam on the outdoor running track. Sam’s wearing a ridiculous Sun’s Out Guns Out tank and is flexing his arms in a lot of ways totally unnecessary for a runner’s warm up. Then Steve sprints past on the track and Jim suddenly understands the gun show. He keeps a straight face and doesn’t say anything, though. Sam doesn’t seem like the type who will welcome a whole lot of teasing about his obvious crush on Captain America.

About as obvious as Steve’s crush on The Falcon, as far as Jim’s concerned, but he’s keeping his mouth shut and waiting to see how this plays out. 

“We might have to start getting up half an hour earlier to avoid the heat,” Sam says in way of a ‘good morning’. “Today’s going to be a scorcher.”

“Good thing the War Machine’s air conditioned, then,” Jim says. They jog slowly on to the track just in time for Steve to blow past them again with a cheeky wave. “I remember driving from Edwards out to Malibu Point in a truck with broken air-conditioning on a day like this. Not the most comfortable trip.”

Sam laughs. “You sound like such an old man when you talk like that. ‘Back in my day…’”

Jim flicks a hand at him. “Get off my lawn you young whippersnapper.”

They complete the lap in silence, except for Sam’s sarcastic ‘on your left’ when Steve races past them again. 

“I’m getting the wings, I’ll show him ‘on your left’,” Sam grumbles after Steve laps them for the third time.

“Just pretend you have to go slow to keep me company,” Jim says. “You could totally keep up with him if you wanted to.” 

“For two whole seconds.”

They stop talking for a while so they can pick up the pace, jogging hard. Jim likes this, likes having to push himself to keep pace with Sam, keeping going when he might otherwise slack off and stop. There’s just something nice about being able to jog alongside a friend and push each other along a bit. It’s companionable.

“So, are you going to take some time off?” Jim asks when they drop their pace for the cool down.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Going to go see my Mom.”

“She in Washington?” Jim asks. He knows Sam lived there for a while.

“Yeah. Nat’s going to drop me off in the quinjet before she heads to the Bartons’.”

They slow to an amble, barely lifting their feet off the ground.

“A cynic would say that now’s the best time for something to go wrong. What with you, Natasha, and me leaving for a few days.” Sam says.

Jim laughs. “Don’t jinx it.”

\---

If there is any power in Sam’s words, it hasn’t kicked in by the time Jim is ready to head to New York. He doesn’t bother to pack anything—he has everything he needs at the Tower anyway—so he spends half an hour wandering the compound to check on the team before he leaves. He runs into Maria Hill in the hall—she grumbles about ‘some people having the luxury of a break’ good-naturedly, and asks him to say hi to Pepper for her—and then finds Vision leaving the main computer lab.

“I thought you might have left already, Rhodey.”

It’s never going to stop being weird, hearing his nickname in the same voice that JARVIS used to only ever call him ‘Colonel Rhodes’ with.

“Just saying good byes,” Jim tells him.

“Ah. I hope you enjoy your time away.”

“Are you going anywhere?” Jim asks.

“No.” Vision inclines his head towards the medical lab at the very end of the hall. “I will be spending some time with Doctor Cho. We still have much to with regards to how the gemstone has affected my physical makeup. Also, Wanda will not be leaving the compound, and we have been watching _Almost Human_ together. I would hate to miss the next episode.”

Jim takes a moment to decide if Vision’s having him on. He really can’t tell. “Well, see you on Friday then.”

He finds Natasha and Wanda in the gym—Natasha taking the younger woman through some basic self-defence moves—but doesn’t interrupt them with more than a quick wave.

\---

Sam and Steve are hanging out by the quinjet when Jim clanks out onto the landing pad in the War Machine. He waves, and Steve waves back with his water bottle.

“Have fun,” Sam yells.

Jim gives him a thumbs-up, and then he’s away.

Even after months of wearing the suit every week for training or missions, even for a routine flight like this, Jim can’t squash the absolute visceral  _thrill_  of flying without a plane. The only thing that would make it better is if he could have the helmet open and feel the wind on his face, but it’s not at all practical at the speed he’s doing. He does a loop and buzzes the top of the compound, and then streaks away over the countryside towards New York.

Although he’s hardly pushing the suit to its, the trip feels like it takes no time at all. He comes in low, twisting and turning through the streets, and lands on the Tower’s landing pad gently. Tony is waiting there, his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face. Jim pops open the mask and grins down at him.

Tony saunters up to him and stands on tiptoes to press a kiss to Jim’s lips over the edge of the mask.

Jim kisses him back, warm and enthusiastic, and then pulls away so that he can step out of the suit.

“Hi honey, I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic feels like it wandered around and went absolutely nowhere, but I wanted to show a snapshot of down-time between Rhodey and individual teammates with the idea that they're all still working out how the team fits together. I apologise for the severe lack of Wanda—I couldn't find a voice for her at all.


End file.
